That had been the one that had been on fire that afternoon after the lunch he’d hosted. At first, his heart had squeezed when he’d seen Harry’s post, because he hadn’t invited everyone. He hadn’t invited Liesl or Corinne or Rosie, and Beth had traveled home for the holidays today. Boston and Cora had been going to Uncle Mav’s after their luncheon to have dinner and spend time with her.
Cash supposed he’d invited everyone who was an adult, because Rosie, Liesl, and Corinne were still in high school. They’d liked the pictures and responded to the texts, with Rosie demanding that Cole get her a doughnut that night and bring it to her for breakfast in the morning.
Cole had grumped right back at her with,I’m not coming back to the house in the morning. I’m going back up to Whispering Pines to work.
I’ll bring it to you,Cash said.But I’m planning on sleeping until noon tomorrow.
I’ll be done with work by then,Rosie said.I can come by and pick it up.
Whatever works for you,he said, because he had no plans for tomorrow besides entertaining Jet and Wade and figuring out how to tell them about his feelings for their younger sister.
“Well, we have to go, Grammy,” Lark said. “We still have to stop by Cash’s parents’ with dessert too.”
She met his eye, and he almost asked her if she was going to invite her grandmother to come stay at the house. He decided to keep his mouth shut and let Lark lead, and it took another ten minutes for her to get out of the house after collecting everything for Sweetie and hugging her grandmother at least three times.
When he pulled the door closed behind them and he heard her grandmother twist the lock, all of the tension finally left his shoulders.
“That was really fun,” he said, though he’d contributed very little to the conversation and he wasn’t sure her grandmother would even remember his name.
“She liked you,” Lark said, throwing him a smile. She carried Sweetie under her coat, and the little dog looked at Cash with squinted eyes, almost as if she had fallen asleep.
“How could you possibly know that?” he asked. “You talked to her the whole time, and I sat on the couch.”
“Because sheletyou sit on the couch with her cats,” Lark said. “And didn’t pepper you with questions.”
Cash chuckled and darted ahead of Lark to open the door for her. With everyone situated in the truck, and Sweetie riding on Lark’s lap, he looked over to her. “You’re not going to be able to sit silently on the couch at my parents’ house. You know that, right?”
“It’ll be fine,” she said.
While Cash wasn’t so sure about that, he made the fifteen-minute drive across town and partway up the canyon to the gated community where he’d moved in with his father just before he’d turned thirteen.
“I started seventh grade here,” he said. “I lived with my mom in Utah for the first twelve years of my life.”
“Did you?” Lark asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Right down in the corner, in Saint George. It was only a couple of hours from Vegas. My daddy rode the rodeo and was based there, but I still only saw him a couple times a year.”
“And then you moved in with him up here. How’d that happen?”
“He retired from the rodeo,” Cash said simply, his memories flowing thick through his mind. “He said he wanted to be a father.”
He pulled into the driveway, his headlights reflecting brightly off the white garage door. “It was rough in the beginning. It was like living with a stranger. I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. I was in a new place, and I was really angry.”
Lark reached over and threaded her fingers through his. “About what?”
“Everything,” Cash said honestly. “Sometimes I still feel like that.”
He looked out the window and watched the front door. His parents had cameras on the house, and surely they knew he’d arrived. Sitting out in the truck would only call attention to the fact that he’d brought Lark with him, and they’d want to know what had taken him so long to come in. Still, he didn’t move.
“I went to therapy for quite a few years,” he said. “I used to color these temperature pictures.”
“What’s a temperature picture?”
“It’s where you check the temperature outside every day, and each one has a range assigned to a color. So say sixty-five to seventy-four degrees is blue, and you color all of those numbers on your picture. And when you finish, you have a great design.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Lark said. “You liked that?”
“It gave me something to focus on,” Cash said. “I wasn’t good at school, and I hated homework. My counselor said it would help me form habits, and she was right.”
